Trent Intervenes and Other Stories Page 6

  It was as they sought for places on the crowded upper deck that Mrs Lancey put her hand on Trent’s arm. ‘There hasn’t been a sign of it all the evening,’ she whispered. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means,’ murmured Trent, ‘that we got her away from the cause at the critical time, without anybody knowing we were going to do it.’

  ‘Whom do you mean by “anybody”?’

  ‘How on earth should I know? Here comes your sister.’

  It was not until the following afternoon that Trent found an opportunity of being alone with his hostess in the garden.

  ‘She is perfectly delighted at having escaped it last night,’ said Mrs Lancey. ‘She says she knew it would pass off, but she hasn’t the least notion how she was cured. Nor have I.’

  ‘She isn’t,’ replied Trent. ‘Last night was only a beginning, and we can’t get her unexpectedly stranded for the evening every day. The next move can be made now, if you consent to it. Lady Bosworth will be out until this evening, I believe?’

  ‘She’s gone shopping in the town. What do you want to do?’

  ‘I want you to take me up to her room, and there I want you to look very carefully through everything in the place – in every corner of every box and drawer and bag and cupboard – and show me anything you find that might – ’

  ‘I should hate to do that!’ Mrs Lancey interrupted him, her face flushing.

  ‘You would hate much more to see your sister again this evening as she was every evening before last night. Look here, Edith, the position is simple enough. Every day, about seven, Lady Bosworth goes into that room in her normal state to dress for dinner. Every day she comes out of it apparently as she went in, but turns queer a little later. Now is there any other place than that room where the mischief, whatever it is, could happen?’

  Mrs Lancey frowned dubiously. ‘Her maid is with her always.’

  ‘I suppose so; but it doesn’t make any difference to the argument. That room is the only place where Lady Bosworth isn’t with the rest of us, doing what we do, eating the same food, breathing the same air, exposed to all the same influences as we are. Does anything take place in that room to account for those strange seizures?’

  Mrs Lancey threw out her hands. ‘I cannot bear to think that Isabel should be deceiving me. And yet I know – it’s a dreadful thing – and what else could happen there?’

  ‘That is what we may find out, if we do as I say. You must decide. But remember that you must think of Lady Bosworth as one whom you are trying to save from a subtle evil. You can’t shrink from a step merely because you wouldn’t dream of taking it in the ordinary way.’

  For a few moments she stood carefully boring a hole in the gravel with one heel. Then, ‘Come along,’ she said, and led the way towards the house.

  ‘Unless we take the floor up,’ said Mrs Lancey, seating herself emphatically on the bed in her sister’s room twenty minutes later, ‘there’s nowhere else to look. I’ve taken everything out and pried into every hole and corner. There isn’t a single lockable thing that is locked. There isn’t a bottle or phial or pill-box of any sort to be found. So much for your suspicions. And all the time I have been working like a Negro slave you have done nothing but stare about you, and play with brushes and combs and manicure-things. What interests you about that nail-polishing pad? You must have seen one before, surely?’

  ‘This ornamental design on hammered silver is very beautiful and original,’ replied Trent abstractedly. ‘I have never seen anything quite like it.’

  ‘The same design is on the whole of the toilet set,’ Mrs Lancey observed tartly, ‘and it shows to least advantage on the manicure things. You are talking rubbish, Philip. Put the pad away and shut the case as you found it. We shall do no good here, I am sure; you will have to guess again. And yet,’ she added, slowly, ‘you are looking rather pleased with yourself.’

  Trent, his hands in his pockets, was balancing himself on his heels as he stared out of the window of the bedroom. His eyes were full of animation, and he was whistling almost inaudibly.

  He turned slowly. ‘I’m only guessing again – that’s my guessing face. Whose are the rooms on each side of this, Edith?’

  ‘This side, the Stones’; that side, Mr Scheffer’s.’

  ‘Then I will go for a walk all alone and guess some more. Goodbye.’

  ‘Yes,’ declared Mrs Lancey as he went out, ‘it’s plain enough you have picked up some scent or other.’

  ‘It isn’t scent exactly,’ Trent replied as he descended the stairs. ‘Guess again.’

  Trent was not in the house when, three hours later, a rousing tumult broke out on the upper floor. Those below in the loggia heard first a piercing scream, then a clatter of feet on parquet flooring, then more sounds of feet, excited voices, other screams of harsh, inhuman quality, and a lively scuffling and banging. Mr Scheffer, with a volley of guttural words of which it was easy to gather the general sense, headed the rush of the company upstairs.

  ‘Gisko! Gisko!’ he shouted, at the head of the stairway. There was another ear-splitting screech, and the cockatoo came scuttling and fluttering out of Lady Bosworth’s room, pursued by three vociferating women servants. The bird’s yellow crest was erect and quivering with agitation; it screeched furious defiance again as it leapt upon its master’s outstretched wrist.

  ‘Silence, devil!’ exclaimed Mr Scheffer, seizing it by the head and shaking it violently. ‘I know not how to apologise, Lancey,’ he declared. ‘The accursed bird has somehow slipped from his chain away. I left him in my room secure just before we had tea.’

  ‘Never mind, never mind!’ replied his host, who seemed rather pleased than otherwise with this small diversion. ‘I don’t suppose he’s done any harm beyond frightening the women. Anything wrong, Edith?’ he asked, as they approached the open door of the bedroom, to which the ladies had already hurried. Lady Bosworth’s maid was telling a voluble story.

  ‘When she came in just now to get the room ready for Isabel to dress,’ Mrs Lancey summarised, ‘she suddenly heard a voice say something, and saw the bird perched on top of the mirror, staring at her. It gave her such a shock that she dropped the water-can and fled; then the two other girls came and helped her, trying to drive it out. They hadn’t the sense to send for Mr Scheffer.’

  ‘Apologise, carrion!’ commanded Gisko’s master. The cockatoo uttered a string of Dutch words in a subdued croak. ‘He says he asks one thousand pardons, and he will sin no more,’ Mr Scheffer translated. ‘Miserable brigand! Traitor!’

  Lady Bosworth hurried out of her room.

  ‘I won’t hear the poor thing scolded like that,’ she protested. ‘How was he to know my maid would be frightened? He looks so wretched! Take him away, Mr Scheffer, and cheer him up.’ So Gisko was led away to bondage, and the episode was at an end.

  It was half an hour later that Mrs Lancey came to her husband in his dressing-room.

  ‘I must say Bella was very decent about Scheffer’s horrid bird,’ she began. ‘Do you know what the little fiend had done?’

  ‘No, my dear. I thought he had confined himself to frightening the maid out of her skin.’

  ‘Not at all. He had been having the time of his life. Bella saw at once that he had been up to mischief but she pretended there was nothing. Now it turns out he has bitten the buttons off two pairs of gloves, chewed up a lot of hairpins, and spoiled her pretty little manicure set. He’s torn the lining out of the case, the silver handles are covered with beak marks, two or three of the things he seems to have hidden somewhere, and the polishing pad is a ruin. When Hignett saw him perched on the mirror he had the pad in one hand – I mean, foot – and was busy tearing away the last rags of the leather.’

  ‘It’s too bad!’ declared Mr Lancey, bending over a shoe.

  ‘I believe you’re laughing, George,’ said his wife coldly.

  He began to do so audibly. ‘You must admit it’s funny to think of the bird going solemnly through a progra
mme of mischief like that. I wish I could have seen the little beggar at it. Well, we shall have to get Bella a new nail-outfit. I’m glad she held her tongue about it just now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, my dear, we don’t ask people to the house to make them feel uncomfortable – especially foreigners.’

  ‘Bella wasn’t thinking of your ideal of hospitality. She held her tongue because she’s taken a fancy to Scheffer. But, George, how do you suppose the little pest got in? The window was shut, and Hignett declares the door was too, when she went to the room.’

  ‘Then I expect Hignett deceives herself. Anyway, what does it matter? What I am anxious about is your sister’s little peculiarity. As I’ve told you, I don’t at all like the look of her having been quite normal yesterday evening, the one evening when she was away from the house by accident. I wish I wasn’t so fond of her, Edith. If it was another woman, she could do what she liked to herself for all I cared.’

  Mrs Lancey sighed. ‘If she had married you she would have been a very different woman.’

  ‘I know. It’s awful to think of what we’ve all missed. If you had married Scheffer, Gisko would have been a very different cockatoo. For of all sad words of tongue or pen – I really am feeling miserably depressed, Edith. What I’m dreading now is a repetition of the usual ghastly performance tonight.’

  But neither that night, nor any night after, was that performance repeated. Lady Bosworth, free now of all apprehension, renewed and redoubled the life of the little company. And the lips of Trent were obstinately sealed.

  Three weeks later Trent was shown into the consulting-room of Sir Peregrine Bosworth. The famous physician was a tall, stooping man of exaggerated gauntness, narrow-jawed and high-nosed. His still-black hair was brushed backward, his eyes were deep-set and glowing, his mouth at once sensitive and strong. He was courteous of manner and smiled readily, but his face was set in unhappy lines.

  ‘Will you sit down, Mr Trent?’ said Sir Peregrine. ‘You wrote that you wished to see me upon a private matter concerning myself. I am at a loss to imagine what it can be, but, knowing your name, I had no hesitation in making an appointment.’

  Trent inclined his head. ‘I am obliged to you, Sir Peregrine. The matter is really important, and also quite private – so private that no person whatever knows the material facts besides myself. I won’t waste words. I have lately been staying with the Lanceys, whom you know, in Italy. Lady Bosworth was also a guest there. For some days before my arrival she had suffered each evening from a curious attack of lassitude, and vacancy of mind. I don’t know what it was. Perhaps you do.’

  Sir Peregrine, immovably listening, smiled grimly. ‘The description of symptoms is a little vague. I have heard nothing of this, I may say, from my wife.’

  ‘It always came on at a certain time of the day, and only then. That time was a few minutes after eight, at the beginning of dinner. The attack passed off gradually after two hours or so.’

  The physician laid his clenched hand on the table between them. ‘You are not a medical man, Mr Trent, I believe. What concern have you with all this?’ His voice was coldly hostile now.

  ‘Lots,’ answered Trent briefly. Then he added, as Sir Peregrine got to his feet with a burning eye, ‘I know nothing of medicine, but I cured Lady Bosworth.’

  The other sat down again suddenly. His open hands fell upon the table and his dark face became very pale. ‘You – ’ he began with difficulty.

  ‘I and no other, Sir Peregrine. And in a curiously simple way. I found out what was causing the trouble, and without her knowledge I removed it. It was – oh, the devil!’ Trent exclaimed in a lower tone. For Sir Peregrine Bosworth, with a brow gone suddenly white and clammy, had first attempted to rise and then sunk forward with his head on the table.

  Trent, who had seen such things before, hurried to him, pulled his chair from the table, and pressed his head down to his knees. Within a minute the stricken man was leaning back in his chair. He inspired deeply from a small bottle he had taken from his pocket.

  ‘You have been overworking, perhaps,’ Trent said. ‘Something is wrong. I think I had better not – ’

  Sir Peregrine had pulled himself together. ‘I know very well what is wrong with me, sir,’ he interrupted brusquely. ‘It is my business to know. That will not happen again. I wish to hear what you have to say before you leave this house.’

  ‘Very well.’ Trent took a tone of colourless precision. ‘I was asked by Lady Bosworth’s sister, Mrs Lancey, to help in trying to trace the source of the disorder which attacked her every evening. I need not describe the signs of it, and I will not trouble you with an account of how I reasoned on the matter. But I found out that Lady Bosworth was, on these occasions, under the influence of a drug, which had the effect of lowering her vitality and clogging her brain, without producing stupefaction or sleep; and I was led to the conclusion that she was administering this drug to herself without knowing it.’

  He paused, and felt in his waistcoat pocket. ‘When Mrs Lancey and I were making a search for something of the kind in her room, my attention was caught by the fine workmanship of a manicure-set on the dressing-table. I took up the little round box meant to contain nail-polishing paste, admiring its shape and decoration, and on looking inside found it half-full of paste. But I have often watched the process of beautifying finger-nails, and it seemed to me that the stuff was redder and greasier than it should be; and I saw next that the polishing-pad of the set, though well worn, had never been used with paste, which leaves a sort of dark incrustation on the pad. Yet it was evident that the paste in the little box had been used. It is useful sometimes, you see, to have a mind that notices trifles. So I jumped to the conclusion that the paste that was not employed as nail-polish was employed for some other purpose; and when I reached that point I simply put the box in my pocket and went away with it. I may say that Mrs Lancey knew nothing of this, or of what I did afterwards.’

  ‘And what was that?’ Sir Peregrine appeared now to be following the story with an ironic interest.

  ‘Naturally, knowing nothing of such matters, I took it to a place that called itself “English Pharmacy” in the town, and asked the proprietor what the stuff was. He looked at it, took a little on his finger, smelt it; and said it was undoubtedly lip-salve.

  ‘It was then I remembered how, when I saw Lady Bosworth during one of her attacks, her lips were brilliantly red, though all the colour had departed from her face. That struck me as very odd, because I am a painter, and naturally I could not miss an abnormality like that. Then I remembered another thing. One evening, when Lady Bosworth, her sister, and myself were prevented from returning to the house for dinner, and dined at a country inn, there had been no signs of her trouble; but I had noticed that she moistened her lips again and again with her tongue.’

  ‘You are observant,’ remarked Sir Peregrine, dispassionately; and again had recourse to his smelling-bottle.

  ‘You are good enough to say so,’ Trent replied, with a wooden face. ‘On thinking these things over, it seemed to me probable that Lady Bosworth was in the habit of putting on a little lip-salve when she dressed for dinner in the evening; perhaps finding that her lips at that time of day tended to become dry, or perhaps not caring to use it in daylight, when its presence would be much more easily detected. For I had learned that she made some considerable parade of not using any kind of cosmetics or artificial aids to beauty; and that, of course, accounted for her not having it in the form of lipstick, and carrying it in a box meant for manicure-paste, which might be represented as merely a matter of cleanliness, and at any rate was not to be classed with paint and powder. It was not pleasant to me to have surprised this innocent little deception; but it was as well that I did so, for I soon ascertained beyond doubt that the stuff had been tampered with and drugged.

  ‘When I left the chemist’s I went and sat in a quiet corner of the Museum grounds. There I put the least touch of the salve on my tongu
e, and waited results. In five minutes I had lost all power of connected thought or will; I no longer felt any interest in my own experiment. I was conscious. I felt no discomfort, and no loss of the power of movement. Only my intelligence seemed to be paralysed; and that did not trouble me in the least. For upwards of an hour I was looking out upon the world with the soul of an ox, utterly placid and blank.’

  Trent now opened his fingers and showed a little round box of hammered silver, with a delicate ornamentation running round the lid. It was of about the bigness of a pill-box.

  ‘It seemed best to me that this box should simply disappear, and in some quite natural, unsuspicious way. Merely to remove the salve would have drawn Lady Bosworth’s attention to it and set her guessing. She did not suspect the stuff as yet, I was fully convinced, and I thought it well that the affair of her seizures should remain a mystery. Your eyes ask why. Just because I did not want a painful scandal in Mrs Lancey’s family – we are old friends, you see. So the problem was to make the box and its contents disappear in a manner which would appear completely accidental, and suggest no ideas of any sort to Lady Bosworth or anyone else. That I managed to do; and now here I am with the box, and neither Lady Bosworth nor any other person has the smallest inkling of its crazy secret but you and I.’

  He stopped again and looked in Sir Peregrine’s eyes. They remained fixed upon him with the gaze of a statue.

  ‘It was plain, of course,’ Trent continued, ‘that someone had got at the stuff immediately before she went out to Italy, or immediately on her arrival. The chemical operation of combining the drug with the salve would hardly have been performed during the journey. But the attacks began on the first evening there, two hours after her reaching the house. Therefore any tampering with the salve after her arrival was practically impossible. When I asked myself who should have tampered with it before Lady Bosworth left the house to go out to Italy, I was led to form a very unpleasant conjecture.’